


Vanity

by scioscribe



Category: All About Eve (1950)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:20:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: “This is how you said Eve would have probably apologized,” Margo said thoughtfully.  “Then again, you did know her so well.  You were so kind to her.”
Relationships: Margo Channing/Karen Richards
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	Vanity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cookinguptales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/gifts).



> I started this for Madness without realizing that it had already closed for posting. /facepalm. So have a late treat that is unfortunately homeless, while I pretend I made it in on time by adhering to the Madness author reveal schedule, if nothing else. Happy belated Yuletide. <3

“Dear Karen,” Margo said.

She was still facing the mirror, smoothing cream into her cheeks and forehead and the persistent little lines around her eyes; Margo didn’t always turn to look at people when she spoke to them. She never had to. Who wouldn’t listen to Margo Channing, no matter how rude she was?

But judging by the sugary tone of her voice, this wasn’t one of Margo’s impulsive, even unconscious little cruelties. Karen knew enough of the theater to recognize an acting choice when she saw one.

There was a ghostly sensation to the moment, like chilly hands gripping her arms and holding her in place.

She said, “I can’t imagine why you think you need so much cold cream. Directors don’t exactly order you covered with greasepaint every night—a little soap and water would get your makeup off just as well.”

“But the way the cream feels is simply divine, and it alludes—more and more vaguely each year—to the concept of youthfulness. I appreciate it for that. But now we’re getting off-track from what I meant to say.”

“Does it matter?” Karen said lightly.

“ _That_ I suppose you’ll have to take up with philosophers. Does a trivial little conversation between friends matter or not—I wonder what they’d say.” She screwed the lid back on the jar of cold cream; her fingers must have been greasy with the stuff, but they never slipped. “I was interviewed the other day by that man from _Playbill_. I forget his name. Insignificant, scuttling little creature, like a beetle but somehow all grown up. Apparently one of his biggest claims to fame is having been one of the people to really ‘make’ Eve—reviewing her understudy performance in _Aged in Wood_ , you know. Along with half a hundred other critics, of course, so you can see what I mean about him really being a small man. But in the course of our talk, he told me how he happened to be at the theater that night.”

Should she bluff, or simply apologize at once?

She’d waited too long to make her choice, apparently, because Margo was going on ruthlessly: “He had the strangest kind of advance notice. Almost as if someone knew there’d be a shake-up that day.”

Maybe Margo would simply blame Eve for it. It couldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility to think that Eve might have been the one to drain the gas tank; Eve _would_ have, surely, if she’d thought of it.

Karen said, “You can’t possibly—”

Margo twisted around in her chair. Her face was masked in white. “You know, I think you might want to consider changing your hair. You’ve been going around with that pile of curls for almost as long as I can remember. Looking like whipped cream on a dessert. It’s absurd.”

So Margo just intended to leave it all right there, bristling and grotesque and messy. Karen couldn’t bear it.

She gave up all pretense of dignity or innocence and just sank down to her knees.

“This is how you said Eve would have probably apologized,” Margo said thoughtfully. “Then again, you did know her so well. You were so kind to her.”

“Margo, I had no idea that she would do anything like what she did—with you and—and Lloyd—and Addison’s column—I only wanted to give her a chance.”

“And to teach me a lesson,” Margo said. Her dark eyes were snappish, almost livid with anger. “Don’t tell me that didn’t figure into it. You hung me up like one of those Mexican piñatas so she could take a swing at me!”

“And I was wrong to do it! Don’t you think living with it all this time hasn’t made me sick?”

“Oh, poor you.” Margo spun back around, ignoring her, as if it didn’t matter to her at all that Karen had fallen to her knees in front of her and stayed there, holding onto the hem of her bathrobe. “Poor, pitiful Karen, the outsider, the eternal optimist. Not like us cynical theater people, all paranoia and selfishness. You’re our beautiful innocent. You sell that angle even better than Eve.”

“I never sold you on anything,” Karen said. She grabbed Margo’s hands, trying to turn Margo around towards her. “Don’t compare me to her.”

“You sold me on the idea that you were my friend. _More_ than my friend.”

“I made a mistake. You can’t say you haven’t made plenty in your life.” It was a comfort to be angry; it let her hold Margo all the more tightly. “To think that I’m begging your forgiveness when you’ve never even so much as asked for mine, no matter what you’ve done.”

“Are you begging?” Margo said. She sounded nothing more than curious. But she was looking at her now—looking _down_ at her.

And at last Karen had found the script for this particular play. It didn’t matter—even not knowing it, she’d been hitting her marks the whole time, all kneeling, grasping, ravaged desperation. Yes, sometimes they’d been more than friends. It felt like a pilot light had found something inside her, something invisible, and lit her up, burning her from the inside out. It had been a long time since she had wanted anything this badly.

She supposed she ought to thank Margo, not just plead with her. Karen had never been good at taking things just because she wanted them. She had always needed to justify everything with selflessness, had always needed to act for someone else’s sake. Now she could act for Margo’s.

She tilted her chin up. “Yes,” she said. “I guess I am begging you, Margo.”

“Not especially well,” Margo said.

Karen let go of her hands and reached for her knees instead. Margo let her part them, the heavy cotton folds of her robe falling to either side of her bare thighs. She hadn’t needed to be naked today, not after that show. She’d chosen it.

“Did you do this with her?” Margo said.

Already a little breathless. Karen tried not to take pride in that—tried and failed.

“No,” she said. That was honest, or at least it was honest enough. She remembered the lacy trim on the black velvet Eve had worn the night of Bill’s party, the night Margo had made such a drunken show of herself; Karen had wanted to dip her fingers into the little spaces between the loops in Eve’s collar. Feel the difference between Eve’s skin and the lace, look up close to see the distinction between the white and the cream.

“Would you believe I never did?” Margo said. “The one time I thought about it, I realized I couldn’t quite tell whether she wanted to touch me or skin me alive. I can answer that question now, of course.” Her fingers curved around Karen’s chin. “With you I always knew. I always trusted you, even when it felt like everyone else around me had a knife to my throat.”

She didn’t know how often she believed Margo, but she believed her on that. Karen had hurt her.

She lowered her head and kissed the inside of Margo’s thigh. There were the tiniest, lightest little hairs there, almost blonde rather than brown, and so soft Margo’s razor tended to flatten them rather than cut them. Karen could feel them tickle her cheek as she rubbed her face there, kissing and caressing. She’d never wanted to be Margo. Never wanted Margo’s life. She’d been safe from envy, if nothing else.

She’d fallen to hubris and lust instead. She’d wanted to be above the glittering world of the theater; she’d wanted to play Lady Bountiful to its poor benighted denizens. And in the end, Eve had used that world to strip her of almost everything—including, she supposed, of her illusions. It was like she’d put a helping hand down into quicksand that had almost swallowed her whole.

But here she was, with Margo again, just like old times. One more dressing room in a long line of them.

How perfectly Margo had choreographed this, right down to the cold cream on her face, as if she wanted to drive home that under the circumstances, she could be sloppy and informal and still receive Karen’s total devotion.

Karen rose up and put one hand in Margo’s hair, the tie on her loose bun an awkward ridge between her fingers. She kissed her, ignoring the threat of messiness, the cool shock of the cream. She wasn’t the only one who’d been fooled. She wanted to drive that home. And in the midst of the kiss, with Margo’s mouth hot against hers, she wanted this too, this refusal to apologize completely.

She let go of Margo’s hair and reached between her legs instead.

“You’re as wet as I’ve ever felt you,” Karen said.

Margo gasped a little, pushing against her fingers. “This isn’t how I planned it, you know.”

“I know. Is that so bad?” She drew Margo’s earlobe between her teeth.

“Everything with you is always worse than bad or better than good,” Margo said. She sounded irritated by it, and Karen felt something dissolve at the center of her, something that let her be warm as well as hot.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured against Margo’s ear. She kept working her fingers, moving them faster and faster, in tune with Margo’s movements. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything, darling. It was hardly even for her. I was just angry, you know. It was all about you.”

“Do you swear it?”

“Of course I do,” Karen said. “With every little bit of my heart.” With Margo, it was better to just admit to wanting to hurt her than to go on saying you hadn’t thought of her at all, that you’d only been doing it for someone else’s sake; Karen would have laughed at that once, at the vanity of the theater world, but not anymore. She didn’t have the distance for it. She was buried in all this just as deeply as she was buried in Margo—and if she loved the lights and plays a little less than the hot, silken feel of Margo against her fingertips, well, she could surely be excused for that. Everyone knew Margo.


End file.
